The Truth about Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving. Like many of these days, this day is filled with controversy, parades, footballgames, documentaries, various shows, and emotion. Turkey, sweet potatoes, sweet potato pie,greens, apple pie, stuffing, cranberries, yams, mashed potatoes, and other foods are consumed bypeople nationwide during this day. First, we have to acknowledge the Native Americans. They arethe indigenous peoples of America. They suffered unspeakable crimes and oppression by manyEuropean terrorists to put it lightly. Thanksgiving (as practiced in the USA) is definitely a celebrationin which many people omit the perverted the genocide and the bloodshed of the Native Americans.Thanksgiving in the USA is a celebration of the genocide of Native Americans. So, we have to tellthis truth about these things, so we should never omit real history here in the world. Thanksgivingceremonies have existed for thousands of years and have been in existence among numerousreligious and spiritual traditions for thousands of years too. In May 1541, Spanish explorer FranciscoVasquez de Coronado led 1,500 men in a thanksgiving celebration at the Palo Duro Canyon. Hetraveled north from Mexico City in 1540 to search for gold. The group went into Texas. The TexasSociety Daughters of the American Colonists cite this event as the First Thanksgiving in 1959.In June 30, 1564, French Huguenot colonists celebrated in solemn praise and thanksgiving inJacksonville, Florida. The Huguenots were French Protestants. They were protected in France oftheir religious liberty rights once by King Henry IV of France via his Edict of Nantes (which promotedthe religious and political rights of the Huguenots). King Henry IV was more progressive and he wasassassinated by a Catholic fanatic, Franois Ravaillac in 1610. The Edict of Nantes was revoked bythe other reactionary absolute monarch French King Louis XIV (whose nickname was the "sun king"since he wanted to control France under his rule). Cardinal Rechieleu was another agent of theCatholic Church and he supported Catholic absolute monarchs as well. The Huguenot colony was

destroyed by Spanish raiding party in 1565. This thanksgiving was commemorated at Fort CarolinaMemorial on the St. Johns River. In North America, by September 8, 1565, Pedro Menendez Avileslanded in St. Augustine, Florida where he and his men share a feast with Native Americans. The firstNorthern American celebration of European harvest festivals is held in Newfoundland by theFrobisher Expedition. There has been a similar food festival in Jamestown in 1610 too. TheThanksgiving that has been talked about and debated about a lot is the one involving the PlymouthColony of New England.First, we have to describe the time period of the early 17th century. In America, Native Americantribes thrived before European colonization. In Europe, it has been a century after the ProtestantReformation. The Plymouth Colony existed from the English. In England, there was conflict betweenthe monarchs and the Parliament including the people. The Parliament wanted to limited the powerof the British monarchs while many British monarchs (especially after the Tudors) wanted morecontrol over the people of Britain. Back then, King James I ruled England. He was an Anglican (whichwas a carbon copy of the Roman Catholic church but with little modifications) and an absolutemonarch. King James I also survived the evil Jesuit-inspired Gunpowder plot of 1605 (which involvedEnglish Catholics like Robert Catesby). King James I believed in the divine right of Kings doctrine,which is very similar to the doctrine of the Catholic belief of the supreme earthly power of thePope, which I don't agree with obviously. His Basilikon Doron, a manual on the powers of a king,promoted this belief. He or King James I opposed the criticisms from the Pilgrims and the Puritans.The Puritans were not Separatists. They wanted to reform the Church of England from within andeliminate it of its Catholic influences. They were mainly upper middle class and they settled inSalem and Boston. The Pilgrims were Separatists. They wanted to separate from the Church ofEngland completely and form its own independent, autonomous church. The Pilgrims settled inPlymouth Rock in Massachusetts. So, the Pilgrims were Separatists and the Puritans were NonSeparatists. The Pilgrims (with people like Williams Bradford, William Brewster, etc.) came first andthe Puritans (with people like John Winthrop, John Endicott, Miles Standish, etc.) came later intoNorth America.

So, the Pilgrims came into Massachusetts in order to promote their theocratic religious system andmany of them were involved in the genocide of Native Americans. In 1607, the Archbishop of Yorknamed Tobias Matthew raided homes and imprisoned religious Separatists. First, the Pilgrims or theSeparatists came into the Netherlands, first in Amsterdam and then to Leiden in 1609 in order forthem to escape Anglican religious persecution. The congregation in Leiden, Netherlands grew.Many of the children of the congregation adopted the Dutch language and customs. Many of themjoined the Dutch army. William Brewster publicly criticized the English Crown and the AnglicanChurch. He faced death, so the Separatists escaped into America. They left in the Mayflower shipand the Speedwell. The Mayflower Compact was a document created by the Pilgrims whichoutlined their own form of government or community. The Plymouth Colony was created in 1620and it lasted until 1691. The Mayflower landed in Cape Cod on November 9, 1620. They went intoPlymouth in December 21, 1620. They suffered a great winter. Many colonists suffered scurvy, lackof shelter, and other bad conditions form being on a ship. Many people died. Myles Standishbecame a military leader.By March 1621, the Pilgrims met a Native American named Samoset. There was a village calledPatuxet. The supreme leader of the region was a Native American Wampanoag man namedMassasoit. He was the sachem or chief. The colonists learned of Squanto from Patuxet too. Squantohad been to England and he knew English. Massasoit and Squanto were apprehensive about thePilgrim ssince many English sailors murdered several of Massasoits tribe previously. The Pilgrimsalso stole corn stores in their landings of Provincetown. Squanto himself was kidnapped by ThomasHunt in 1614 and spent time in Europe. He returned to New England in 19 acting as a guide toexplorer Captain Robert Gorges. Captain Hunt, an English slave trader, arrived at Patuxet. It wascommon practice for explorers to capture Native Americans, take them to Europe and sell theminto slavery for 220 shillings apiece. That practice was described in a 1622 account of happeningsentitled "A Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affairs in Virginia," written by EdwardWaterhouse. True to the explorer tradition, Hunt kidnapped a number of Wampanoags to sell intoslavery. William Fenton describes how Europeans decimated Native American villages in his 1957

work "American Indian and White relations to 1830." From 1615 to 1619 smallpox ran rampantamong the Wampanoags and their neighbors to the north. The Wampanoag lost 70 percent of theirpopulation to the epidemic and the Massachusetts lost 90 percent. The smallpox was intentionallypassed to the Wampanoag, one of the earliest perpetrations of biological warfare. Massasoit andhis men had massacred the crew of the ship and had taken in Squanto.Samoset returned to Plymouth on March 22 with a delegation from Massasoit that includedSquanto; Massasoit joined them shortly thereafter. After an exchange of gifts, Massasoit andGovernor Carver established a formal treaty of peace. This treaty ensured that each people wouldnot bring harm to the other, that Massasoit would send his allies to make peaceful negotiationswith Plymouth, and that they would come to each other's aid in a time of war. There has beendebate about the Pilgrims Thanksgiving. Scholars believe that the harvest took place in November1621. Yet, the Pilgrims called their first Thanksgiving feast at 1623.

After the departure of Massasoit and his men, Squanto remained in Plymouth to teach the Pilgrimshow to survive in New England, for example using dead fish to fertilize the soil. For the first fewyears of colonial life, the fur trade (buying furs from Native Americans and selling to Europeans) wasthe dominant source of income beyond subsistence farming. When Governor Carver died, WilliamBradford was the new Governor of Plymouth. The Native Americans offered peace treaties with thePilgrims. Things would change.Massasoit, Squanto, and several other Wampanoags had been captured by Corbitant, sachem ofthe Narragansett tribe. A party of ten men, under the leadership of Myles Standish, set out to findand execute Corbitant. While hunting for Corbitant, they learned that Squanto had escaped andMassasoit was back in power. Several Native Americans had been injured by Standish and his menand were offered medical attention in Plymouth. Though they had failed to capture Corbitant, theshow of force by Standish had garnered respect for the Pilgrims, and as a result nine of the most

powerful sachems in the area, including Massasoit and Corbitant, signed a treaty in September thatpledged their loyalty to King James.Standish is a real scoundrel and murderer. This murderer Myles Standish organized a militia to getinto the settlement of Wesagussett. He lured 2 military leaders into a house and Standish plus hismen stabbed and killed two unsuspecting Native Americans. Word quickly spread among the NativeAmerican tribes of Standish's attack; many Native Americans abandoned their villages and fled thearea. As noted by Philbrick: "Standish's raid had irreparably damaged the human ecology of theregion...It was some time before a new equilibrium came to the region." Myles Standish was themilitary leader of the Plymouth Colony.Pilgrims traded in fur a lot. The power of the Massasoit led Wampanoag grew in the region. ThePilgrims also enslaved black people too. Many settlers blasphemed God by praising the death ofNative Americans who had smallpox, which is sick. In a letter to England, Massachusetts Bay colonyfounder John Winthrop wrote, "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues amongthem. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, beingin all not 50, have put themselves under our protection."European colonialism continued. The first major war in America among the Pilgrims was the PequotWar of 1637. This was about the dispute over the control of the Connecticut River Valley nearHartford, Connecticut. Dutch fur traders and Plymouth officials wanted territories and land. TheBritish sent an influx of settlers to the area. The English settlers threatened the Pequot NativeAmericans.Other confederations in the area, including the Narragansett and Mohegan, who were thetraditional enemies of the Pequot, sided with the English. The event that sparked the start of formalhostilities was the capture of a boat and the murder of its captain, John Oldham, in 1636, an eventblamed on allies of the Pequots. In April 1637, a raid on a Pequot village by John Endicott led to aretaliatory raid by Pequot warriors on the town of Wethersfield, Connecticut, where some 30English settlers were killed. This led to a further retaliation, where a raid led by Captain JohnUnderhill and Captain Mason burned a Pequot village to the ground near modern Mystic,Connecticut, killing 300 Pequots. Plymouth Colony had some people who had little to do with theactual fighting in the war.The 1637 Massacre in Mystic caused at least 700 Native Americans to be murdered by Europeans.Men, women, and children Native Americans were burn alive and their buildings were destroyed.William Bradford or the Governor of Plymouth praised the massacre in sick terms by the followingwords: Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others runthrough with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It wasconceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus fryingin the fire...horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, andthey gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclosetheir enemies in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting anenemy."

This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots," readGovernor John Winthrops proclamation.You couldnt make this stuff up. This is real. Later, Pequots prisoners were executed. Pequot womenand children were sold into slavery in the West Indies. The Pequot War killed most of the Pequotpeoples.King Philips War came about in the late 1600s. By the end of the conflict, the Wampanoags andtheir Narragansett allies were almost completely destroyed. King Philip was the nickname ofMetacomet or the younger son of Massasoit and the heir to Massasoit's position as sachem of thePokanoket and supreme leader of the Wampanoag. He became sachem upon the sudden death ofhis older brother Wamsutta, also known as Alexander, in 1662. King Philips War came, becausemore English colonists came into New England and demanded more land. Native Americans wererestricted in where they could live. King Philip didnt like the loss of land of the Native Americansand he wanted to stop it. The Wampanoag capital was in Mount Hope. The town of Swansea wasjust a few miles from the capital of Mount Hope.The proximate cause of the conflict was the death of a praying Native American named JohnSassamon in 1675. Sassamon had been an advisor and friend to King Philip; however Sassamon'sconversion to Christianity had driven the two apart. Sassamon was murdered. Accused in themurder of Sassamon were some of Philip's most senior lieutenants. A jury of twelve Englishmen andsix Praying Native Americans found the Native Americans guilty of murder and sentenced them todeath. There is a debate on whether the men were guilty of killing Sassamon or not. King Philipprepared for war. He raided English farms and harmed property. The war continued with NativeAmericans using guerrilla warfare. The Plymouth leadership mistrusted all Native Americans. TheEnglish formed an alliance with the Sakonnet to fight King Philip and his forces. After the Churchwas given permission to grant amnesty to any captured Native Americans who would agree to jointhe English side, his force grew immensely. Philip was killed by a Pocasset Native American; the warsoon ended as an overwhelming English victory. The Wampanoag chief Metacomet (or King Philip)was shot and killed by an Native American named John Alderman on August 12, 1676. Metacomet'scorpse was beheaded, then drawn and quartered. His head was displayed in Plymouth for twentyyears. His head was stuck on a pole in Plymouth, where the skull still hung on display 24 years later.Metacom's young son was sent to the West Indies as a slave, along with numerous otherWampanoag and surrounding tribes.

The Following text was taken from Russel Means' autobiography entitled: "Where White Men Fear ToTread." Russel Means is a well know Native American social activist. It discusses the background to thefirst "Thanksgiving" on American shores:

"The Wampanoag now wanted to remind white America of what had happened afterMassasoit's death. Massasoit was succeeded by his son, Metacomet, whom the colonistscalled "King" Philip. In 1675-1676, to show "gratitude" for what Massasoit's people had donefor their fathers and grandfathers, the Pilgrims manufactured an incident as a pretext tojustify disarming the Wampanoag."The whites went after the Wampanoag with guns, swords, cannons, and torches. Most,including Metacomet, were butchered. His wife and son were sold into slavery in the WestIndies. His body was hideously drawn and quartered."For twenty-five years afterward, Metacomet's skull was displayed on a pike above thewhites' village. The real legacy of the Pilgrim Fathers is treachery. Most Americans todaybelieve that Thanksgiving celebrates a boar harvest, but that is not so."By 1970, the Wampanoag had turned up a copy of a Thanksgiving proclamation made bythe governor of the colony, the text revealed the ugly truth:'After a colonial militia had returned from murdering the men, women, and children of anIndian village, the governor proclaimed a holiday and feast to give thanks for the massacre.He encouraged other colonies to do likewise -- in other words, every autumn the crops arein, go kill Indians and celebrate your murders with a feast.'"The Wampanoag we met at Plymouth came from everywhere in Massachusetts. Like manyother eastern nations, theirs had been all but wiped out. The survivors found refuge in otherIndian nations that had not succumbed to European diseases or to violence. TheWampanoag went into hiding or joined the Six Nations or found homes among theDelaware Shawnee nations, to name a few. Some also sought refuge in one of the twohundred eastern-seaboard nations that were later exterminated."Nothing remains of those nations but their names, and even some of those have been lost.Other Wampanoag, who couldn't reach another Indian nation, survived by intermarriagewith black slaves or freedmen. It is hard to imagine a life terrible enough that people wouldchoose instead, with all their progeny, to become slaves, but that is exactly what someIndians did..." (end of the book source).The King Philip's war decreased the Native American population in New England massively. TheGlorious Revolution of 1689 (which caused a limited monarchy in the UK after James I fled toFrance) represented the beginning of the end of the Plymouth Colony. The last official meeting ofthe Court occurred on June 8, 1692. The legacy of American Thanksgiving is filled with bloodshed,conflict, and controversy. Afterwards, more Europeans colonists would come into America to enactgenocide of Native Americans, slavery, and other evils. America, itself, was created on the blood ofblack people and Native Americans. Many of the leaders of the American Revolutionary War (boththe American colonists and the British redcoats) owned slaves. Also, Scholarship like RoxanneDunbar Ortiz's "Indigenous People's History of the United States" is ignored in academia andpopular culture. The early English colonizers and capitalists wanted to go into America to promote

the myth of white supremacy and to expand their resources. Today, many Native Americans suffervarious forms of oppression like: disease, homelessness, dilapidated and vermin-infested housing,substance abuse, inadequate education, unemployment, and police brutality. One of their freedomfighters, Leonard Peltier has languished as a political prisoner for nearly 30 years; framed in eventsprovoked by an assault on Native people by the FBI. So, we desire true liberation.What we can do to honor the truth is to help others. We have every right and justification to workin charities, to help our neighbors, to pray, to defend the victims of police brutality, to feed thehungry, to do actions to help those who are less fortunate, and to do so many other forms ofalmsgiving during this time of the year. That is the right thing to do and it makes the Creator andour ancestors happy. We should never sugarcoat what the past was since we learn the past in orderfor us to create a better present and future. We should be thankful of the blessings that we do haveand appreciate the sacrifices of our ancestors. So, you know the truth now. It is our responsibility todo something about it and that is to use activism in fighting against imperialism, racism,discrimination, sexism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, classism, and all evils of the world. We want allhumans to be liberated and we want the environment to improve too. We desire justice. Withbeing said, I am thankful of many things. I am thankful of God for giving my life. I am thankful offamily and friends who are great human beings. Also, I am thankful of the opportunity to showpeople the truth about many subjects like history, sociology, politics, anthropology, technology,culture, science, mathematics, and other aspects of the Universe. The truth will remain forever.